A note for school managers and CFI's reading this thread.
You know exactly what is happening in the UK training/club flying industry and many are facing increasingly difficult staffing problems.
You probably have noticed the huge traffic we have in ads from recruitment agencies and airlines over the last few years. There are places where these guys can advertise far more cheaply than here. You have quotes from or use those sites so why take the PPRuNe route?
The reason is entirely hard nosed and commercial - there are too many jobs compared to the numbers of qualified, competent pilots actively searching for work on those sites.
PPRuNe, however, is where everyone voluntarily comes every day. This is an especially important point when you consider how qualified instructors consistently express how undervalued they feel. You'll see the same airlines and agencies advertising here year after year because the psychology is entirely turned on its head and it works. It works and it happens this way:
The mountain has come to Mohammed rather than the supplicant scanning the jobsites and it effectively prompts those not presently looking for a change to apply. Opening up a whole new and huge window to applicants who never normally see your cheaper ads works. If you lose just 3 hours of training turnover that's the ad that could have prevented the situation happening in the first place.
We don't actually care whether you advertise or not. PPRuNe appears with or without ads and the years without were far simpler. No one gets any commission and the money goes back into expanding the site.
At different times some of you will remember this post. You know folks are here more times in an hour than the job sites see in a week. There is an important and proven advantage in approaching potential employees where they chose to be everyday rather than expecting them to come looking for you. Is it a shift in the way you're used to thinking? Yep, but every page you read is topped with ads from those who've realised folks feel flattered when it's you that makes all the effort to reach them. People feel entirely differently if they are effectively being headhunted.
Regards
Rob Lloyd